Give Up Your Seat. Please?

In most of East Asia, signs near on public transportation appeal to your conscience: they invite you to "please give up your seats to those who need them more." In America, the signs state baldly that "federal law requires that these seats be given to seniors and those with disabilities." One sign of a more legalistic society. The latter has a somewhat disclamatory air too: it sounds as though the transport company really doesn't want to deprive you of your seat, but was forced to do so by Washington.

The signs on the Bangkok Metro show a elderly person, a pregnant woman, children, and a bald guy in a saffron robe (took me a few seconds to figure that was a monk.) The bit of colour in a otherwise monochrome sign was striking.

Walking the Big Mango

Being a flâneur in the tropics is a terrible idea, unless maybe one adopted a Mediterranean schedule ... one usually ends up like the inside of a tropical fruit: wet and sticky. Bah. I remember reading one traveller's lament about how the Skytrain has "turned parts of Silom and Sukhumvit into sunless chasms." That isn't necessarily a bad thing in this weather.

Sathorn was boring. Boring. BORING. Well, maybe not that bad, but walking the length of it was definitely not worth having to endure the tropical heat and humidity. Ditto Silom, Surawong and the long stretch of road along one side of the Chulalongkorn University campus. They were all sort of generically bland with nothing very striking along the way. 

The shophouses of Chinatown and Charoen Krung were at least less bland, and the tree-lined canals of Dusit and lively Lumphini Park were definitely more interesting to walk through.

Can you imagine if all of Bangkok was more like Dusit and Lumphini Park? Instead of ten-lane roads you'd have maybe four-lane ones, and the space in the middle formerly given to six more turned into a canal. And then there'd be plenty more greenery by the roadsides. Sure there could still be high-rise concrete buildings---it would be flatly impossible to pack in eight million people without them---but they wouldn't be the only show in town. It would be like some sort of cross between Singapore and Amsterdam. It would be really nice and liveable. Maybe it'll happen one day. In the far, far, far future.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The more I learn, the more I marvel at how completely ignorant I have been, and will no doubt continue to be ...